mostly like white noise
by dress without sleeves
Summary: To do: graduate as soon as possible and never make friends again, because they're a pain in his ass. // His first thought is that it’s too bad she’s wearing clothes, and his second is that he really, seriously is going to hell.


**Author's Notes:** So, I know that Community is definitely headed toward Jeff/Britta, and I guess I'm okay with that, but I sort of like to indulge my weird Jeff/Annie kink sometimes, because it hasn't been let out its cage in a while.

Anyway, this takes place cerca-Politics of Human Sexuality. Not much Jeff/Annie, mostly just Jeff/Jeff, but either way, I dig it.

mostly like white noise

_--_

_I'm only here because of a brief addiction to pills that I was told would help me focus, but they actually just made me lose my scholarship and virginity._

_--_

Annie comes back from Christmas with a special glow to her cheeks and an extra shine to her hair, which she lets out of her usual clip. She's wearing the low-cut blue sweater that had given Jeff so much trouble the night of their debate and a little skirt that shows her legs all the way up to _here._

(Jeff is going to hell.)

Shirley tries to tell him that she's in love, to which Jeff responds _emphatically_ that he does _not_ care and does _not_ want to get involved, but of course Pierce is on that shit like white on rice and Britta goes along with Shirley because she's just now learning to be a Real Girl. Abed mentions in a detached way that Annie's nicely symmetrical, so naturally attractive to males, and Troy makes a jokes about lobster tails that Jeff doesn't understand and isn't sure he wants to.

Annie blushes down at her Spanish textbook and murmurs, "Bruce is back in town," with a voice that implies _I'm waiting for a ring and prowling for baby strollers_, so Jeff goes into his cell phone and changes her number from Crazy/Single to Annie/Spanish. (This is so that he doesn't confuse her with Annie/Taco Bell.)

When class ends, they're both headed across campus, so he agrees to let her walk with him provided that she not speak.

She makes it an admirable ten steps before blurting, "So Bruce is my ex-boyfriend and he went Colorado State, but now he's back on academic probation, and he said he wanted to get back together." He sort of hums at her and keeps walking, so she pokes him pointedly in the shoulder and demands, "_Well_? What do you think I should do?"

Jeff says firmly, "Annie, I cannot stress enough how unimportant this is to me."

"You should meet him," she answers, instead of responding to his insult like a normal person. "I think you'd like him. You guys are a lot alike, except that he's occasionally gay."

Jeff can't choose just one thing wrong with that statement, so he lets the whole thing slide. "I really just want to make sure that this is clear. It's not actually possible for me to care _less_ about what you do under the sheets. Although I might recommend _not_ dating someone who doesn't actually like vaginas."

Annie squeals and throws her hands over her ears, dropping her books in the process. "Don't say that _word!_" she hisses, "God, what are you, a total _sicko_?!"

Jeff refrains from pointing out that no one over the age of thirteen a) uses _sicko_ as an insult, and b) has trouble using the grown-up word _vagina_.

He manages to lose her around the dining hall and goes straight home after his science requirement; he'd promised to meet Shirley in the study room to gossip about Britta's girly new perfume and what that meant for him and sex, but that ran the risk of seeing, well, anybody else at Greendale, so he texts her _kidnapped by dean, meet tomorrow_ and jumps in his home sweet Lexus.

He's halfway through a delicious meal of Ramen and _Judge Judy_ when there's a knock on his door. Britta had threatened to come by and make his faucet work, but she'd been roped into spending the majority of the evening fending off P0W3R H0UZ, the rapper who both Pierce and Vaughn had employed in their musical battles. He had taken a fancy to Britta during the filming of Vaughn's highly creepy black-and-white "documentary", in which he hid behind things and filmed her walking by.

If Jeff hadn't been absolutely terrified that P0W3R H0UZ would butcher him in his sleep, he might have offered his protection. As it stood, Britta was on her own.

Distracted by thoughts of Britta and P0W3R H0UZ, Jeff fails to use the peephole and instead blindly opens his door.

Whoops. He wonders if it's rude to ask for a do-over and then pretend not to be home.

"Hi Jeff," Annie says, brushing past. "This is Bruce, we dated in high school. Do you have a bathroom? I have to vomit. Vomit: verb. To eject matter from the stomach through the mouth. See: throw up, puke, spit up."

He blinks several times before responding. Bruce is leaning against his doorframe, laughing. "Dude, she's like, a total shit show. I haven't seen her this bad since senior year."

Annie stumbles against him and lays there, her cheek rested on his back. "Annie, what did you take?" Jeff asks, fighting a slight feeling of panic because _he's not supposed to care about these people._ Damn you, Señor Chang!

She giggles and starts picking microscopic bits of dust off his sweater. "Puh_lease._ I didn't swallow _anything_. No, wait, that's a double entendre (noun. A word or phrase open to two interpretations, one of which is usually risqué or indecent. See: Ambiguity, innuendo)."

Jeff looks over at Bruce, who's now examining his nose hairs in Jeff's special, custom-crafted hand mirror. "She honestly wasn't annoying enough with_out_ the drugs?"

Bruce laughs. "No way, man. I didn't give her anything. You think I want Annie Adderol back? That bitch was all _kinds_ of crazy. She's just drunk. It's no problem. I can take her home and love her back into sobriety."

"Yes," Jeff agree with a nod, "any love from you would sober a girl _right_ up."

Bruce doesn't get it, so he gives Jeff a satisfied nod. "I'm like a cop and baby. One minute your driving home, and your drunk, and the radio's playing like some good music, you know, like Celine Dion or something, and then suddenly… suddenly the _Monkees_ jump on that shit and you're like WHAT? WHAT? and start swerving… and that's when I come in with my shiny lights and arrest your ass, all the while a baby on my hip to confuse you and show you my softer side as I cuff your head to your ankles."

Suddenly, Annie's interest in Troy was beginning to look less like a weird and interesting quirk and more like a type.

Jeff ushers Bruce to the door. "Well, I'll let you know how she's does, Officer."

"Baby Officer — the Bofficer!" Bruce corrects.

"Yeah, I'm not going to call you that," Jeff says, and then firmly shuts the door.

When he gets back into the living room, Annie is simultaneously trying to define cannibalism and take a huge bite out of his pillow.

"Come on, Annie. Let's get you to bed."

She looks up at him with those big terrified eyes of hers and asks, "Um, we're not going to have sex, are we? Because I'll be honest, I've only done it twice, and both with Bruce, and then he came out as gay so I don't know if we even did it right and—"

"Annie," Jeff interrupts before she can try to give him a play-by-play. "I'm sure you did great, okay? But right now is sleep time. You can just make yourself comfortable."

She nods slowly and starts trundling toward the bedroom; Jeff kindly grabs her shoulders and steers her to the couch. When she stares up at him he shrugs. "You'll probably puke tonight," he explains. "That door is the bathroom. The other one is my bedroom. Don't come into my bedroom unless you are dying, and in that case, call first."

He goes to the linen closet and tosses her a pillow, which she fails to grab and instead hits her square in the face. He plays it safe with the comforter and walks it back over to her.

She curls up in the tiniest corner of the couch and squeezes her eyes shut. He's turned off the lights and his hand is on his door handle when she asks, "Am I asleep yet?"

"Ask me again in an hour," he says, and then goes into his bedroom.

Jeff reminds himself to graduate as soon as possible and never make friends again, because they're a pain in his ass.

He closes is eyes and in halfway to dreaming about Annie/Taco Bell when a beam of light spills into his bedroom and he feels something shift next to him. _Please be a stray cat_, he prays, and peels one eye open.

"Your living room is trying to kill me," Annie whispers, and Jeff sighs.

_Close enough._ "No it isn't, Annie."

"Yes it is!" she insists, jutting out her chin. "I opened my eyes and there was darkness _everywhere_, like it was trying to _get me_."

Jeff knows from experience that logic doesn't work on drunk people, so he asks, "I didn't realize that you were prejudiced against the dark's right to spread."

Annie frowns. "I am not prejudiced!"

"But you don't believe that darkness has the right to be wherever it wants, whenever it wants? I'll bet you don't want any foreigners in the States, either!"

"That's not true! ...That's sort of true." She hesitates. "Glenn Beck says—"

"Glenn Beck doesn't care about black people," Jeff interrupts in a sleepy drawl. "What makes you think he'd give a rat's ass about darkness?"

Whatever Annie says next sounds mostly like white noise, and Jeff doesn't realize it as he falls asleep, but she's gotten under his covers and his arm has found its way around her shoulders.

When he wakes up in the morning, she's curled up against him with her hand on his chest and her flowery-smelling hair fanned out across his pillow.

His first thought is that it's too bad she's wearing clothes, and his second is that he really is seriously going to hell.

To his great surprise, she doesn't freak out when she wakes up; instead, Annie simply climbs out of bed and smoothes out her skirt and asks what he wants to eat.

She makes him breakfast that's not just Lucky Charms with some milk of questionable age like usual, and hums along to the radio, and even though she doesn't quite manage to meet his eyes, he can tell that she's intentionally trying not to lose her shit because she knows he hates it when she gets emotional.

After they've eaten, he drives her back to her apartment. Bruce is sleeping in his car outside because he didn't have a key, and Jeff hesitates as she reaches for the handle.

"Wait, wait," he blurts at last, as she's stepping out of the car.

She looks at him with a quiet cock of her head.

"It's just …" he sighs. These people are turning him into such a _person_, for God's sake, with real emotions and things. What had he done to deserve this? "Yesterday, you asked me what I thought you should do about Bruce."

She looks at him expectantly and Jeff has to remind himself that reaching over to brush the little bit of honey off the corner of his mouth would be very wrong. Very, very wrong.

(He wonders if she tastes the way she smells — light, flowery, like springtime and oh my God he sounds like the Abed version of himself.)

"It's okay, Jeff," Annie says, putting her hand on his arm. "I know we always drive you crazy with our emotional stuff. I guess it's a result of being old and alone, it makes you grumpy."

"I'm not old," he snaps, and then shakes his head. "But that's not what I was going to say. I was going to say that …" he winces, but makes himself finish the thought, "… that you deserve better than someone who only occasionally likes women. You're bright and beautiful and not _always_ a complete psychopath, and one day you'll find someone who loves you, or at least consistently loves vaginas, and I think that you should hold out for that person."

Annie flushes (Why is he thinking of raspberries? This is not okay.) and looks down at her lap. "Thanks," she mumbles, and then scrambles out of the car before he can see her smiling.

On the drive home, Jeff calls the police and has them arrest Bruce on charges of impersonating an officer.


End file.
